Yates: Lawsuit seeks fired AG’s emails

A new lawsuit is seeking access to emails sent and received by Sally Yates during her 10-day tenure as acting attorney general in President Donald Trump’s administration.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, filed Monday by the conservative group Judicial Watch, is seeking emails from Yates’ government account between Jan. 21 and Jan. 31 of this year.

“Between her involvements in the Russian surveillance scandal and her lawless effort to thwart President Trump’s immigration executive order, Sally Yates [sic] short tenure as the acting Attorney General was remarkably troubling,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “Her email traffic might provide a window into how the anti-Trump ‘deep state’ abused the Justice Department.”

Yates was fired on Jan. 30 after she refused to defend Trump’s initial executive order instituting a travel ban from seven Muslim-majority countries.

On Monday, Yates told a Senate subcommittee that she had warned Trump’s White House Counsel Don McGahn on Jan. 26 that then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn “essentially could be blackmailed” by Russia over his contacts with that country’s ambassador. Trump asked Flynn to resign his position Feb. 13.

Yates was Deputy Attorney General from January 2015 and accepted a request from the Trump administration to become Acting Attorney General after the president’s inauguration.